This year saw a major update to the LAPaL project, which will be developed in 2021. The aim of this project, commissioned by the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), is to present publicly technical and scientific data on a selection of long-acting medical technologies. The information gathered in LAPaL mainly concerns the potential applications of these technologies, as well as the intellectual property relating to them. The developments since 2021 have been carried out in collaboration with Unitaid, the LEAP research programme and the CELT research institute.

Since 2021, several updates have been made to the site, including the addition of management of pharmaceutical compounds used as active ingredients in long-lasting medical technologies. These can be consulted in the same way as the technologies already displayed on the site, as well as their links with long-lasting technologies. The LAPaL site has become a very complete tool, making it possible to manage all the visible data on the site using a fully customised management tool.

Since the beginning of the year, we have added a large number of new features, mainly for the use of site visitors : 

From the main page of the site, it is now possible to compare characteristics between compounds or between technologies. Users can select several items and then activate the comparison mode. This mode then presents each selected element in a column for a visual comparison of their characteristics. The result can also be exported in Excel format.

This page displays an overview of the content of the site and some statistics about the registered technologies on the site. These statistics make it possible to compare different characteristics of the technologies, in particular the frequency of administration indicated for the uses of the technologies, or the therapeutic areas concerned by the technologies.

Clinical trials for technologies as well as for pharmaceutical compounds were added in a previous update, but were presented in summary table form in the details pages. We have added a page dedicated to clinical trials to present the clinical trial(s) for one or more compounds/technologies in graphical form. A 1st graph presents the active periods of these clinical trials in the form of a timeline, and a 2nd graph presents the age groups of participants.

This new page presents, in the form of an interactive map, the state of regulations in vigour for a compound or technology, for all the countries and regulatory bodies concerned. Users can also view the data in table format and export it to Excel.

As medicines registration status is a new dimension of information on the LAPaL site, we have added an entirely dedicated section to the management tool.

There is a lot of data on technologies and compounds, and entering this information can be time-consuming, particularly data on clinical trials and regulatory status. In order to make it easier for users to enter content and to avoid data entry errors, we have implemented several tools to import data from an Excel format. We have also added Excel exports containing all the information for a technology or compound, as well as dedicated exports for clinical trials and regulatory status.

For both technologies and compounds, the Excel import files contain around 120 fields spread over 8 Excel sheets. All content can be imported in this way, including the full list of clinical trials and regulatory statuses. The import tool was the most complex part of this new development, not only in terms of the volume of data possible, but also in terms of the validations required for each of these fields.

It's always a pleasure to work on the LAPaL project, which has continued to evolve since the 1st version, not only because of certain technical challenges, but above all because of the depth of the field involved. The project will continue to evolve, especially in terms of consolidating the links between technologies and registered compounds, and the possibility of creating compound elements using other elements that have already been registered.

We'd like to thank them for the close collaboration we've enjoyed since the start of this project, and for the rich, complex but extremely interesting contacts we've made with specialists in this field.